In response to comment by wedrifid on Rationality Drugs
Comment author: DuncanS 03 October 2011 08:27:23PM 0 points [-]

Consuming chemicals that have been tested is certainly an improvement on consuming chemicals that haven't been.

Consuming chemicals to make your brain work better seems to me to be a rather similar activity to overclocking a computer. Let's add more voltage. Let's pour liquid nitrogen into it. Perhaps it will go faster ! Perhaps it will, but will it still be working in 5 years time?

First of all, note just how crude these efforts are compared to the technological research undertaken by the companies that actually make microchips. The same is true of the brain - it can make dopamine and deliver at synapses - exact points of contact throughout the brain. Yet you see people discussing just adding more dopamine everywhere, and thinking that this is in some sense improving on nature in a clever way.

I have to mention a point against myself - which is that I do take general anaesthetics, which, while not an intelligence enhancer, is definitely an intelligence modifier for specific circumstances. However, turning brain function off is arguably simpler than trying to make it better.

It is possible, definitely, to improve human intelligence by combining it with a computer. So it's not the case that I'm against the idea that it's impossible to improve on the natural intelligence we all have - it obviously is.

What I'm pointing out is that all of these drug ideas are bound to be something that evolution has at some point tried out, and thrown away. And they are really unsophisticated ideas compared with those the brain has actually adopted.

Even the situation dependent argument isn't as strong as you might think - for example your brain has a lot of adaptations to cover the "unpleasant and potentially traumatic things" situation, for example - and these adaptations generally disagree with your view that you shouldn't remember them. It's probably the case that intelligence tests are a novel environment, however....

In response to comment by DuncanS on Rationality Drugs
Comment author: Randolf 12 October 2011 11:27:50PM *  0 points [-]

What I'm pointing out is that all of these drug ideas are bound to be something that evolution has at some point tried out, and thrown away. And they are really unsophisticated ideas compared with those the brain has actually adopted.

Well there could be many reasons why evolution has" thrown them out". Maybe they are harmful in the long term, maybe their use consumes precious energy, or maybe they just aren't "good enough" for evolution to have kept them. That is, maybe they just don't give any signifigant evolutionary advantage.

Evolution doesn't create perfect beings, it creates beings which are good enough to survive.

Comment author: Randolf 03 October 2011 10:29:29PM *  0 points [-]

Eagles are lonely hunters who don't spend much time with other birds, are quite rare in numbers and only live in the wilderness. Robins however, are often seen near other birds, basically live everywhere and are also large in numbers. So mayhaps people choose Robin as the better disease spreader simply because Robin probably is the better disease spreader.

There are very many factors that may affect this kind of a test.. What do you think about the following?

If you were told that planktons had caught a disease, how likely would you think it would spread among other sea species? Now suppose fish had caught the disease?

Now, plankton definitely isn't the most obvious sea species, while fish is. Yet I dare suspect that people would select plankton as the better disease spreader simply because they are everywhere. I'm not certain though.

So, mayhaps, because people know how a disease spreads best among large populations, they tend to select a species which is large in numbers, or which they think to be large in numbers. Maybe people select the typical member of the group as the better disease spreader (when asked to choose between two), simply because such typical member is also likely one that people see often and hence they also believe it is great in numbers.

In essence, my point is: Maybe, when people are asked which one of two species of a given group are better disease spreaders, they select the one which is typical in the group of potential disease spreaders of species, and leave the one which is more atypical out.

In response to Feeling Rational
Comment author: Randolf 02 October 2011 10:45:43PM -1 points [-]

I think that the saying "What can be destroyed by truth, should be" is a little bit too black and white to work well in all aspects of life. For example, a clumsy and fat person who thinks he is actually rather agile, might be a lot happier with this false belief than if he were aware of the truth*. Of course it could be said that if he knew the truth, he would start to exercise and eventually become healthier, but that's not necessarily the case. Another example would be, that if a not-so-good-looking person thinks he looks good, he might be encouraged by that false belief to ask someone he likes for a date.

*Here when I talk about truth, I mean that how things are in the physical reality. ( whatever that may mean. )

In response to comment by Randolf on Value is Fragile
Comment author: JoshuaZ 15 September 2011 10:41:50PM *  1 point [-]

I suspect that you are imagining this world a good because you can't actually separate your imagined observer from the world. The world you are talking about is not just a failure of humanity it is a world where we have failed so much that nothing is alive to witness our failure.

In response to comment by JoshuaZ on Value is Fragile
Comment author: Randolf 16 September 2011 10:45:58PM *  0 points [-]

I don't think you can call such a world good or perfect, but I don't think it's all bad either. I quess you could call it neutral.

I mean, I don't see that world as a big failure, if a failure at all. No civilization will be there forever*, but the one I mentioned had at least achieved something at it's time: it had once been glorious. While it left it's statues, it still managed to keep the world habitable for life and other species. (note how I mentioned trees and plants growing on the ruins). To put it simple, it was a beatiful civilization that left a beatiful world.. It isn't fair to call it a failure only because it wasn't eternal.

*Who am I to say that?

In response to Value is Fragile
Comment author: Randolf 15 September 2011 10:35:51PM *  0 points [-]

I don't know, or maybe I don't understand your point. I would find a quiet and silent, post-human world very beatiful in a way. A world where the only reminders of the great, yet long gone civilisation would be ancient ruins.. Super structures which once were the statues of human prosperity and glory, now standing along with nothing but trees and plants, forever forgotten. Simply sleeping in a never ending serenity and silence...

Don't you too, find such a future very beatiful in an eerie way? Even if there is no sentient being to perceive it at that time, the fact that such a future may exist one day, and that it can now be perceived through art and imagination, is where it's beauty truly lies.

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